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Monday, June 27, 2011

LOS ANGELES -- Note to Bud Selig: Next time somebody tries to buy one of your crown jewel franchises, make them show you the money.

I wish Selig had talked to me when Frank McCourt was trying to buy the Dodgers seven years ago.

Folks in Boston knew McCourt would be a disaster for Major League Baseball. He was a smooth-talking, nicely-dressed, well-mannered guy with parking lots and delusions of grandeur. He fancied himself as a serious bidder for the Red Sox in 2001 when the Yawkey Trust put the team up for sale, but nobody in Boston took McCourt seriously because he didn't have enough of his own money.

The "sale" of the Red Sox turned out to be a bag-job of the highest order. Cable czar Charles Dolan submitted the highest bid, while Boston businessman Joe O'Donnell was viewed as the local favorite to get the team.

Tire-kicker McCourt was never in the running. In December 2001, Selig announced that John Henry's bid was the winner. Selig was beholden to Henry (former owner of the Marlins) and put him together with Tom Werner (former owner of the Padres) and Larry Lucchino (former Orioles and Padres boss).

Peter Gammons casted some doubt on McCourt's bid for the Red Sox back in 2001; I've been unable to find anything similar from Shank. One thing I've always thought about Shank - he always seems to draw the long knives after the bad event occurs, rarely beforehand, hence the title of this post.

I was stunned when McCourt and his wife, Jamie, got the Dodgers in 2004 -- by a unanimous vote -- virtually without any of their own cash.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

It's almost amazing how lazy this guy is. I haven't seen a Boston Globe Shank column for over a week; Bob Ryan has written three in that same time span.

Noticed this week - Shank hasn't been doing his Saturday radio show (98.5 FM) lately; Comcast Sports New England has started a Saturday morning program this week (9:00 - 12:00 noon) called The Baseball Show with Bob Neumeier, Lou Merloni, Sean McAdam and Shank. I'm listening to a bit of it right now, and it's OK as far as three hours of baseball talk goes, mainly because I haven't heard Shank say anything...

Thursday, June 16, 2011

ST. LOUIS -- They did it for the old folks in Presque Isle, Maine, and White River Junction, Vt. They did it for the baby boomers in North Conway, N.H., and Groton, Mass. They did it for the kids in Central Falls, R.I., and Putnam, Conn.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Shank's recap of Game 6wasn't as irritating as his other Bruins columns is a decent recap of the Bruins' 5 - 2 win over Vancouver, forcing Game 7 Wednesday night. It's typical of Shank, in a span of one week, to say Vancouver deserves the Stanley Cup to describing the team as quitters and calling Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo a crybaby.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

... of not having to read any more Shank hockey columns! State the obvious, throw in a baseball reference, provide a game summary and repeat yourself a bunch of times, and it's another painful to read Shank hockey column.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Seen a black bear wandering in your neighborhood? Anything’s possible in this wacky New England spring of 2011 and this might be the Year of the Bruin.

It’s 90 degrees outside and the big boys are still playing hockey indoors, and last night the Bruins again routed the Vancouver Canucks, 4-0, to square their Stanley Cup Final joust at two games each. The series resumes tomorrow night on the other side of the continent. Game 6 will be Monday in the Causeway Street cauldron as the Bruins attempt to win their first Stanley Cup since Bobby Orr ruled in 1972.

The rest of the article goes on in the usual Shank manner - a lot of words, little to say.

Would it be a Shank column without one annoying Red Sox reference? Of course not!

So utterly lacking in creativity and original thought, Shank needs to inject baseball phrases into nearly every column he writes. The rest of the column is standard Shank effort, which is to say, little or none.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Not just the Boston Bruins, but this article as well. Besides the painfully obvious fact that Shank, by his own admission, does not follow hockey, this column is peppered with Shankisms.

* Trademark negativism;

* Obligatory comparison(s) to the Boston Red Sox;

* Boring game recap;

* "Sons of (insert coach / manager's name here)";

* Baby boomer nostalgia / hearkening back to a better time & place ("It’s an article of faith that the New Garden can never be as loud at the old barn that was destroyed in the name of luxury boxes and air conditioning in the mid-1990s.");

* Bitch about ticket prices (..."the latest (and priciest) Bruins game of all time."), which is rich, coming from a man who likely has never actually paid for a ticket since he's been a professional writer. A real man of the people, this Shank...

Friday, June 03, 2011

Working hard to burnish his hockey street cred, Shank interviews Harry Sinden, former general manager of the Bruins. As with last week's column with Bobby Orr, the less Shank narrates the better the column becomes. More column like this, please!

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Like the sun rising in the east and the proverbial bear crapping in the woods, a Bruins loss is enough for Shank to pounce and go negative after a single game.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — They are 4,029 kilometers from home, taking on an entire country, attempting to do something they have not done since the Nixon administration.

It is not going to be easy.

On a day when natural disasters plagued fans back in Greater Boston (what is it about the Bruins and power outages in the finals?), the Bruins dropped the first game of the Stanley Cup finals in excruciating fashion last night, losing to the favored Vancouver Canucks, 1-0, on a Raffi Torres goal with only 18.5 seconds left on the clock.

That’s right, people. The Bruins and Canucks skated to a scoreless tie for 59 minutes and 41 1/2 seconds before Vancouver won it when Torres slipped the puck past Tim Thomas after a terrific pass from Jannik Hansen on a two-on-one.

The Bruins played well, but this was a crushing defeat. Boston went 0 for 6 on power plays, including a four-minute stretch in the first period, and an 83-second five-on-three in the second. Boston has converted only 5 of 67 power plays in this amazing playoff run.

How do you know he's now off the bandwagon?

Your Bruins are in a little bit of a drought when it comes to this event.

Classic Shank negativity reverberates throughout the entire column. There's also a new angle I've detected in some Shank columns, especially this one - ever get the feeling Shank's lecturing you? If that's not a turnoff, I don't know what is.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Scouring the Globe's Boston.com sports pages, I stumble upon Shank's latest Bruins bandwagon 'effort' and, right off the bat, this sorry excuse for a columnist ruins it with a Bruce Springsteen song lyric:

“Time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.’’

He has the boring part down pat. Lazy only begins to describe this column. Shank insists that this club will be compared to the Big, Bad Bruins of the 1970's. I don't recall such fervored insistence when Shank jumped on previous bandwagons with respect to the Celtics and Red Sox. Well, maybe not the Red Sox...

A few paragraphs later, the truth is revealed:

Maybe it’s a Baby Boomer thing. Those of us born after World War II always think it’s about us. Our music was better. Our cars were faster. A sport was a sport. It was OK to hitchhike and eat cheeseburgers and nobody wondered whether Richard Nixon was born in the USA. Tom Menino is great, but he’s no Kevin White.